These are among the elements that make up the Five Alarm Funk experience. The Vancouver-based band is nine men strong and over a decade deep into a career that has seen it release five acclaimed albums and burn up stages across the country on four national tours. And this vehicle isn’t about to slow down. In fact, Five Alarm Funk is just picking up steam.

Five Alarm Funk’s fifth studio LP, released last June, is the hard-rocking Abandon Earth, a concept record about the destruction of Earth by a giant tyrannical robot. The band took the album’s Balkan-inspired horns, prog-metal six-string shredding, and ambitious, cinematic arrangements on tour across Canada and into the United States in the summer of 2014.

And the road goes ever on. Five Alarm Funk will hit the studio again this winter, and after that? Well, the plan is to take on the entire planet, but FAF will be happy to get the party started in the U.S. And Europe. Not to mention Australia and New Zealand.

It won’t be long before music lovers around the world learn what the group’s Canadian fans have known for years. A Five Alarm Funk show is more than a concert; it’s a high-octane, knock-your-socks-off dance party. Come prepared to get sweaty.